The perks of being bilingual: Autobiographical memory and aging among bilingual and monolingual Hispanic adults

Significant gaps remain in our knowledge of cognitive aging in Hispanic adults, the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States (U.S.). Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM), which has well documented age-related differences, has not been directly examined in older U.S. Hispanic adults - a population that is commonly bilingual. This study aimed to examine the effects of Spanish-English bilingualism and aging on EAM among Hispanic adults.

In the present study 100 young and middle-aged/older Hispanic adults (50 English-Spanish bilingual Hispanic participants and 50 monolingual English-speaking Hispanic participants) narrated EAMs in a structured interview. We assessed these narratives for episodic and non-episodic details using an established scoring protocol.

We replicated the commonly observed age-related decrease in episodic detail generation among Hispanic participants, with non-episodic detail not significantly differing between young and older Hispanic participants. Among young Hispanic participants, bilingualism was associated with higher episodic, but not non-episodic, detail generation. This bilingualism advantage for episodic detail, however, was not evident among older Hispanic participants.

These results underscore the complex interplay between bilingualism and age in autobiographical memory for events among Hispanic adults. Our study highlights the importance of including diverse racial/ethnic and linguistic samples in cognitive aging research to better understand how bilingualism and cultural factors influence memory across the lifespan.